The question on most people’s lips in relation to Beamish & Crawford is “Can the Cork brewery survive ownership by Heineken?”.
A number of options are open to Heineken after it takes control of B&C should all go through ‘tickety-boo’.
The first of these would be to simply close down the brewery. In one fell swoop Heineken Ireland could rid itself of is second-greatest stout rival. However such a move would be deeply unpopular in Cork - and elsewhere - and may do a great deal of damage in the short term to Heineken Ireland.
On the up side though, it would then have some pretty prime property to dispose of right in the centre of Cork.
The other alternative would be to amalgamate both B&C and Heineken Ireland into a new greenfield site outside Cork and thus have at its disposal not one but two pretty prime properties in the lucrative centre of The Real Capital.
Apparently B&C’s new state-of-the-art bottling facility could be dismantled fairly easily and moved to such a greenfield site. Such a move would most likely be accompanied by a considerable slimming down of staff (across the board?) thanks to the economies of scale presented by the merger.
A third option would be to sell off the B&C operation to one prepared to pay a high price for the lucrative Miller franchise, presuming Miller was willing to be paid for. Some suggest that a major company is already sniffing the brewery air…. But it’s unlikely to be Diageo.
The real question is what will Heineken nv do with its stout rival?
A shrinking stout market and the economies of scale offered by the acquisition would inevitably pit the 190 workers at B&C against the much heavier-staffed Heineken Ireland operation.
But before all that, might we see a Management Buyout - to find history repeating itself?